


Cast your soul to the sea

by Deshima



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: F/M, Growing Old, Growing Up, Second Chances, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 20:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deshima/pseuds/Deshima
Summary: Moana's life didn't end of course with returning the heart of Te Fiti. She grew up, she grew old and Maui was never far away.





	Cast your soul to the sea

When they first meet, romance is the furthest thing from both their minds. He is a thousands year old demi-god who cannot help but see anyone younger than five hundred years as an infant. She is sixteen year old and though she is beginning to understand that there is more fun to be had with boys than just giving them cooties she still thinks that they are ultimately very silly beings. His antics do not convince her otherwise. When she hugs him goodbye, there is love yes. But is is the love of a little sister towards a big brother, of a pupil towards her teacher.

She grows up, from a teenager to woman and she stills find boys and men to be silly. She discovers however that some are sweet in their silliness and she figures she could share her life with one of them. Not yet though. She leads her people as the first wayfinder in centuries and future chief, assisting her father wherever she can. She is not chief yet though which gives her a great deal of freedom. Maui drifts in and out of her life, visiting and occasionally “fetching his favourite wayfinder” for an adventure or other. They are best buddies, boisterous elder brother and annoying little sister and when Maui’s reputation starts to grow again hers grows as well until they are Maui-and-Moana, the demi-god and the chief-in-waiting.

While she grows up her father grows old , his hair turning white seemingly overnight and ten years after her first adventure he decides to step down. She has matured by then, lost most of her wild hairs (but not all) on the seas and she takes over his mantle with grace and poise. Though her father stays on as her advisor she has less time now and she only goes on adventures some of the time. It doesn’t stop Maui from visiting though and he is there at her wedding, glaring at her new husband and giving him the shovel talk like any elder brother would. Her husband, a silly gentle man who seems to think she hung the stars instead of just finding them, looks a bit wild around the eyes after that but he seems to accept quickly enough that by marrying Moana he gained Maui as some sort of intermittent brother-in-law.

Moana grows from a woman to a mother. Her usual swift stalk, barely one skip away from a run, slows down to stately swaying glide as she first carries her children between and later on her hips. Maui does not miss the occasion to mercilessly tease her about how big she is ( she is huge with her first while strangely small when pregnant with the twins) and how slow ( she still beats him at the sailing race and she won’t let him forget it), but he also asks the wind to blow when she complains about the heat and he is the third person to hold her children ( first her mother, then her husband, then Maui. She is only fifth herself as her father has a go after the demi-god).

 

Her children grow up while she grows wise ( and maybe a bit strange) and Maui still comes by, now to spoil them mercilessly. By then she is not Moana of Motonui any more but Moana of the Green Southern Islands as her people have spread and grown and with now three big villages and several smaller settlements in her care she is busier than ever. She still occasionally goes on an adventure with Maui but it is rare now and with her blessing ( they would still go without) he starts taking her children with him instead. Luckily their adventures are not nearly as wild as her firsts, though she still scolds Maui when she hears the stories of some. 

Her daughter and sons go from children, to teenagers to adults themselves, from impish and mischievous, to wild and adventurous, to responsible and a little bit wise. Moana grows even wiser as well but mostly she starts gathering white hairs. Her people have grown and spread even more, going further and further south where the ocean starts to cool and where islands are covering in mists. Two more villages have popped up and countless settlements and Moana is more than happy to start passing on some responsibilities to her children. Her daughter and the oldest of the twins do so with aplomb and skill but her youngest seems uneasy under the new responsibilities. He still has quite a few wild hairs and he cannot seem to settle. When he asks her blessing for an expedition to the far south where Maui says he once saw a green misty island with long days and plenty of game, she is not surprised. She gives it and when he goes about a third of the tribe’s young men and women go with him. Maui goes as well to keep an eye on them. They are gone for months and when Maui comes back alone, a lone hawk on the breeze, she almost fears the worst. 

She didn’t have to fear. The journey was long Maui tells them that evening in his usual enthusiastic manner and the weather often inclement. However the island they reached and its sister half a day sailing further south are lush and green and though colder the days are longer and the wood is plentiful. They have decided to settle and as the journey back was expected to be perilous as well they agreed to only send Maui back. In her heart Moana knows she will probably never see her youngest again. She mourns him a bit but she knows he is probably happy with two big islands to lose his wild hairs on. 

On the Southern Green Islands life goes on. Her remaining children marry and have children of their own and Moana settles into the role of crazy grandmother. More and more she has been passing on the chief’s duties to her daughter and when her youngest grandchild passes the age of six she decides to finally pass on the mantle entirely. She has aged gracefully with only her mane of white hair to truly show her age but a chief’s duties are heavy especially for a tribe so big and spread out. Her husband has died a few years earlier. The silly man had fallen out of a tree while trying to surprise her with fresh coconut for breakfast. 

With her duties now mostly taken up by the younger generation, her children grown and her husband gone she now finds her with more leisure time that she quite knows what to do with. At first she tries to find things to do on the islands. She advises her daughter, mediates disputes in the more far-flung settlements when her daughter or son cannot quite make time for it but she inevitably has to conclude that she is honestly bored.

“You know what you need, curly?’Maui tells her during one of his visits. “An adventure.” At first she wants to protest. Surely she is now too old for the rigours of wayfinding, adventures are for the young and wild, not for a slightly crazy grandmother. Then she realizes that while old she in perfectly good health yet and age didn’t really stop her own grandmother either. So after many years of only stepping on a boat for short trips between the islands she finally prepares herself for a longer journey again.

It is almost as if things never changed. Sure she is a bit creakier and she tires more easily, but for such an usually blunt man Maui manages to compensate for that without becoming overbearing. They easily fall into their old banter though the dynamic has changed a bit. She is not quite the annoying younger sister anymore, having seen children and grandchildren grow up. He is not quite the older brother and mentor anymore as she has learned most of his tricks and has invented quite a few of her own as well. They are on a more even foot and Moana, years after she had thought she still could, finds herself watching a man. She never had much patience for the silliness and egos of men but under the layers of bluster and attitude Maui hides a thousands year old soul and there is a surprising amount of wisdom hidden there. She tries not to think too much of it. She may have a quite few good years left in her but it won't be more than a decade maybe two. Maui is a demigod and it wouldn't be fair. Though he hides it right next to the accumulated wisdom Maui carries quite a bit of grief. Before he was anything else Maui is her best friend and she would spare him as much grief as she can. Already she can see him look at her sometimes, wondering how much longer until he has to add another sad tattoo to his collection.

She is fast approaching her eighth decade when she decides that she wants to see where her youngest ended up. She still has strength in her hands and sharpness in her mind but she suspects it won't be for much longer. She wants to make the journey while she still can. Her children and grandchildren see her off as if they will never see her again. She suspects they are right. Maui had told them the journey had been dangerous and should she reach her destination it is unlikely she will make the journey back. So she makes her final goodbyes and tells her daughter the last secrets of the tribe. Maui comes with her of course, as a man, as a whale under her boat or as a hawk on the breeze. 

It is one such occasion when Maui is scouting ahead that the storm hits. She has weathered hundreds of such storms before and while she takes all the precautions she can she isn't too worried. Right in the middle storm however her hands fail her where they have never failed her before. The joints have been aching more and more in the mornings and suddenly the pain flares up so fiercely that she cannot hold on to the sheet anymore. The sail, as reeved as it is, catches the wind and the boat turns violently. Before she can even register the boom comes over in a deadly crash-gybe and it takes her moment to figure out why her head hurts so much and why she is falling deeper and deeper into the stormy waters. She has no air left in her lungs left by then and the surface seems too far away to bother. It isn't a bad way to go she figures and she closes her eyes.

To her surprise she does open her eyes again and the first thing she sees is Maui's face way too close to her own. She yelps and flails and everything feels so strange that it almost sends her flailing again. She doesn't get much of a chance to figure it out as Maui wraps her her in a big hug and squarely lifts her off the ground.

"Curly! You are alive!"he exclaims and he swings her around like a favorite doll. She yelps again and she is beginning to understand why she feels so strange. After years shouting at her children to behave her voice had become more rough and weathered and it hasn't reached such heights in ages. She also shouldn't be able to see Maui's face so clearly with how close he is. Lastlty her body feels lighter and it takes her a while to realise that is because all the small pains that had accumulated unnoticed over the years are now gone.  
Maui hasn't noticed her quiet epiphany and has continued rambling things along the line of "scared me to death" and "never do that again curly".

"Maui What's going on?" she asks and something in her voice makes him stop his monologue.  
"Uhm,"he says. "It's best of you see for yourself." She frowns and he leads her to a still tide-pool. At first she doesn't recognize the person staring back. The last time she saw that particular hair-color it had been on the head of one of her grandchildren not her own. Moana is many things but stupid was never one of them and it takes her a split second to come to the right conclusions. She gives Maui a stare that is equal parts delight, surprise and incredulousness.  
"Tadaah,"he says a bit awkwardly. "Surprise demi-godessness!"  
"Really?" she asks still not quite believing.  
"Really, really"he answers.  
She laughs then and does something she has been wanting to do for years now. She kisses him full on the mouth. Maui does not complain.


End file.
